Belong automates process of diversity hiring for companies

The feature has been designed to help companies quickly identify and engage women candidates, and improve their representation in the recruitment funnel.Brinda Dasgupta | ET Bureau | February 17, 2017, 13:05 IST

The feature has been designed to help companies quickly identify and engage women candidates, and improve their representation in the recruitment funnel. To expand the pool of women, companies use Belong's adaptive search algorithm which relies on public data - either self-reported or assessed using probabilistic methods, such as someone being part of a women-focused forum or group, or attending a specific college.

With traditional sources, recruiters have to sift through a number of male candidates, to find relevant female talent. Not only is this an inefficient process, there's also a high probability that recruiters will quickly exhaust their talent pool of active female candidates.

With 'Belong for Diversity', recruiters can now hyper-target and zero in on female candidates, whether active or passive, that match their requirements.

"A McKinsey & Company report showed that companies with the highest share of women in their senior management teams actually outperformed those with no women by 41%. In fact, according to one Gallup study, inclusive cultures are reported to have 22% lower turnover rates due to increased morale, opportunity and equality. A change in mindset really delivers long term benefits," Rishabh Kaul, co-founder at Belong, told ET.

"Traditional channels like job boards and are not equipped to help recruiters with diversity efforts simply because there are fewer women candidates actively looking for new opportunities. In interactions with several companies, we have found hiring teams are actively trying to find more women applicants to balance gender ratios, and using outbound hiring tactics to target and engage passive talent has been the most successful method of discovering and hiring women candidates," Kaul added.

While activating the new feature can help recruiters find more women candidates immediately, it will not be possible to filter women out of any search query (or remove women from any search).

Bengaluru-based startup Belong uses big data and analytics to redefine the process of recruitment and talent acquisition across industries and organisations. Its curation engine curates talent data across 90 different professional networks, communities and forums to help enterprises discover an untapped pool of relevant talent.